In case you missed it, this happened :)

Hello

Ah, yes, I saw you at 3000 points. I believe you also won a game that didn't give you any points against a 2500+X bot at your way.

What I see now with the top rated bots is that the fights get more and more like when humans play together. Humans don't take the whole board but they try to somehow gain a little income advantage or stack advantage and then they finish the opponent off. In the past my bot was the only one having the right idea about how to play the small earth map but now the competition is tougher. Trogabot wins his games by first trying to win in Australia. If he wins there then he is in the attacking position. Except for Gadzbot I don't know of any bots capable of playing South America. Most bots just stack in a random Africa spot giving a halfway decent bot a free win.

My last big attack was about 4 weaks ago with me completely changing the way my bot fights. I think I can spare enough free time for a next big attack. The times where one bot could completely dominate the battlefield are over though.

Edited 2014-05-04 19:16:35

Trogabot wins his games by first trying to win in Australia

You're only 1/3 right. In our matches, yes, but that's because we have the same starting picks.

125ch209 uses such code (sorry, I peeked, was just curious) to pull off his counterpicks.

How do you have access to our code out of curiosity? Are you even eligible for the competition with such an advantage?

Edited 2014-05-04 19:36:25

You're only 1/3 right. In our matches, yes, but that's because we have the same picks.

That wasn't my whole statement ;). I also said that most (all?) bots don't know how to play South America. Here some random examples of when Trogabot get both his Australia picks and the opponent picks South America + Africa
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/53660f274b5ab235189fa76a
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/536694c34b5ab235189fb32c
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/536675484b5ab235189fb089
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/5365f4794b5ab235189fa522

Ah, I see.

It's actually kinda funny because I initially designed my bot to be an aggressive SA bot (I actually still have a variable in my code called "saRegion" for one of my place army movement). The logic is still the same for starting in Australia and in SA though, although my rankings are significantly different :)

How do you have access to our code out of curiosity? Are you even eligible for the competition with such an advantage?

Ah no, I don't have access to you guys code. If I was able to peek the only thing that would really interest me is how pedrito manages to tell where the opponent expands.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlpRBLkgcBo
All other things in you guys bots are pretty obvious.

I traded JArs with 125ch209. I use his JAR to test my own bot with one of the GUIs someone posted at the forums. This is quite useful since Gadzbot plays differently than SupremeDalek. I was just curious how 125ch209 managed to organize his code since his bot does so well despite him asking those easy questions in the forums.

Oh -- gotcha. I was actually kinda bothered when you said you peeked. Good to know that there's no other advantage :)

added a nasty bug yesterday when doing an update, left the bot losing games all night, made it drop down back to 17th. Did a couple updates yesterday to fix that and a few more things, still slowly climbing up.

Slippery slope with bots of generic approach, you change a little something and it can influence in unpredictable ways, used to have mine stacking up and breaking into SA all the time, now it just disperses around on Africa trying to be smart but hitting enemy walls instead. :D

am i the only one struggling not to rename my bot Anna?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7iU0GGVco8

It's very tight right now in the top. Most games up there are decided by luck IMO. Every now and then the bots make an obvious mistake that a human player wouldn't, but most of the time they are competent.

I'd be surprised if anyone can take their bot to a next level.

well, we have 20 days to find out :p

It's very tight right now in the top. Most games up there are decided by luck IMO. Every now and then the bots make an obvious mistake that a human player wouldn't, but most of the time they are competent.

I'd be surprised if anyone can take their bot to a next level.

TREMBLE.

Sometimes I see games where the winning bot just got plain lucky but the vast majority of defeats aren't necessary. Let's point out some easy to fix mistakes and skip those more tough ones:

Pedrito vs SupremeDalek:
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/5367642c4b5ab235189fc55b
Turn 4: Supreme Dalek takes Australia in one turn instead of defending South America
Turn 7: Unnecessary risk taking with taking Africa in one turn by Supreme Dalek
--> SupremeDalek got lucky in this game.

Trogabot vs psWarlighter:
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/536746814b5ab235189fc2cd
Turn 4: An 8v2 neutrals attack should happen before an irrelevant transfer move.
Turn 10: Same problem with psWarlighter doing his transfers first and then attacking the neutrals. Didn't have any effect though.
--> Trogabot lost because of his turn 4 mistake.

Trogabot vs KewaKareban:
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/5366e7744b5ab235189fba6b
During the whole game Trogabot reveals his problems with expanding efficiently. If the opponent had been smart enough to move towards the known opponent spots in Australia Trogabot would have lost. Turn 4 it was an easy win for KewaKareban.
--> Game not won on luck

pedrito vs RaptorBot:
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/536746124b5ab235189fc2c4
Pedrito knew the opponent had South America. The current version of SupremeDalek would have walked around the stack.
--> Unnecessara stalemate.

pedrito vs Trogabot:
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/5366b2114b5ab235189fb5d3
Unnecessary stalemate. If Trogabot had attacked that Africa spot he would have won.

Gadzbot vs Trogabot:
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/53673bd14b5ab235189fc1e0
Gadzbot is the only bot pulling off counterpicks at present.

I don't have a game at present but most bots just deploy to the opponent border instead of deploying to a bigger stack in the background and moving the big stack first order to the border.

Most games up there are decided by luck IMO.

I'm obligated to agree.
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/536780a64b5ab235189fc81f

counterpicking isn't very "smart" on this setup considering you only start with 2 armies on each territory and very likely bordering your opponent. you won't have time or income to surprise your opponent. that's what i concluded a month or so back. couple weeks ago i also concluded starting in australia with a foot in SA/Africa/Europe is usually better then being based in South America.

Trogabot vs psWarlighter:
http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/536746814b5ab235189fc2cd
Turn 4: An 8v2 neutrals attack should happen before an irrelevant transfer move.
Turn 10: Same problem with psWarlighter doing his transfers first and then attacking the neutrals. Didn't have any effect though.
--> Trogabot lost because of his turn 4 mistake.

Actually, it was a logic bug on turn 3 that was introduced yesterday :-/

Some of the glaringly obvious mistakes with Trogabot surprised me that others didn't take advantage of them. Stalemates are going to slowly go away (I've still got a little time!) now that I've started looking for extra income to use for expanding

Round 28: Estimated Opponent Income: 5

Round 28: Potentially 1 armies available on Argentina for seeking new income

Round 28: Potentially 4 armies available on EastAfrica for seeking new income

Stalemates are just an eyesore when I'm sitting in Africa alone....

Edited 2014-05-05 18:24:49

Most games up there are decided by luck IMO.

No, I disagree -- most aren't. Once in a while, sure. Then again, sometimes you just have to shake your had at the RNG:

http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge/games/536634a64b5ab235189faaca

i do wish the attack randomness wasn't so wide ranged. some of these games you just don't have a chance regardless if you do everything "right" or not.

Opinions are divided on the subject of luck. Good!

was thinking my bot was finally robust, but i seem to still lose against those folks who focus on SA and then stack on north africa while slowly expanding into north america. Even if i expand into asia it's usually too late. So i guess maybe it's time to rethink the idea that australia is safer.

Also noticed that some bots go for triple pick in europe when available, which i feel might be too risky, you will need to be able to defend double border against northafrica for a couple of turns, but somehow they manage to pull it off, i'm divided if they've just been lucky or what.

Hi All! I wonder, how many bots are writen only for this map, and will not work on other maps?
For me I can say that only hardcode connected with map is to select first 2 picks in Australia ( It's given 70% of wins against older version)

Edited 2014-05-06 12:50:10